One dude I would never mess with is Jack Bauer. I can't imagine anything more frightening than dating Jack Bauer's daughter. I know Dion Phaneuf is a tough guy and everything, but his steely gaze is no match for the death glare Jack Bauer throws down as often as most of us smile. Even one of the toughest defenseman in the NHL is a mouse when compared to the last man standing between the terrorists and the complete and utter destruction of Western Civilization as we know it.
Wait, Jack Bauer is a fictional character in a show called '24' you say, his real identity is legendary drunk Kiefer Sutherland you say, and he is in fact Canadian. I'm not buying it for a second, that's just his cover, and all the drinking is to drown away the pain of lost loved ones, as well as all those innocents he had to sacrifice in the name of Uncle Sam.
As the American right does their best to convince the new leader of the free world, B-Rock, that the Geneva Conventions are in fact "quaint," they have referenced the brave service of Jack Bauer as an example of a doomsday scenario where the clock is ticking, and the only way to get the information that will save American lives is to torture anyone, including terrorists, citizens, co-workers, friends, and family.
Torture as they say, is no picnic, but the last administration and their right-wing leftovers seem to be quite fond of it. And the use of a contrived, fictional television series to justify tangible action in the real world is perfectly acceptable to them.
The format of '24' blurs the line between simulation and reality. By running in 'real time,' even through commercials (complete with preceding cliffhangers), the show interpellates the audience into its paranoid, fear-filled hyperreality.
Within this hyperreality, Jack Bauer performs intertextual acts of 'patriotism' by not only killing all the bad guys and saving countless American lives, but also by mediating his viewers' relationship with torture. By simulating the worst conceivable doomsday scenario (season after season amazingly), '24' allows the audience to decide how they feel about torture under the softening light of simulation.
The concept of torture on '24' is run through what Baudrillard refers to as the 'Precession of Simulacra,' where you begin with the real, actual, nails-pulled-out torture. This really real torture is then manipulated by the television medium and the show itself, but at the same time this manipulation is masked. The end result is that on television the torture appears real, the audience has been interpellated into the show so they suspend disbelief willfully and believe it is at least equivalent to, if not actually real, when it is in fact very much hyperreal.
This dynamic softens the horrible, inhuman reality of torture, and frames the debate over its use in a completely absurd way. By watching '24's hyperreality unfold, one cannot help but support Bauer's unique brand of vigilantism. Jack Bauer is not a sociopath; he's an altruist who has sacrificed his entire being for God and Country. But again, '24' is not reality, and reality is certainly nothing like '24'; the acceptance by an audience of simulated realities that involve the use of torture to obtain information propels the audience down a slippery ethical slope. Allowing Jack Bauer, or any other fictional character, to dictate our moral compass, is the equivalent of driving eyes-closed while someone else sits shotgun and tells us which direction to steer.
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